Meanwhile, In Venezuela…Jimmy Carter Offers to Lend a Hand

Ukraine has pushed Venezuela off the front pages, but all the while, the collapse of that country’s socialist regime continues. Demonstrations are ongoing in Caracas and throughout the country:

Anti-government demonstrators

Protesters tear down a wall to get rocks

As if Venezuela didn’t have troubles enough, Jimmy Carter has offered to get involved. Humberto Fontova reports at Frontpage:

Last week Jimmy Carter fired off letters to Venezuela’s fraudulent President Nicolas Maduro and to Venezuela’s defrauded Presidential candidate Enrique Capriles expressing “grave concern” regarding the political turmoil and bloodshed convulsing their nation. From his pulpit at Emory University’s Carter Center, the former U.S. president calls for “dialogue” among the embattled Venezuelan parties and offers to visit the troubled nation — but not as a formal “mediator.”

The news of Carter’s proposed Venezuela visit was only hours old when alarmed Venezuelan anti-socialists sent out an SOS: “Please, desist from your trip,” reads an open letter from Venezuelan blogger/journalist Daniel Duquenal. “You have absolutely no credibility in Venezuela…You have cursed us enough as it is. I can assure you that half of the country has no respect nor credibility for you and the other half (the Castroites) thinks you are a mere fool that they can use and discard as needed.”

The protestors have overwhelming numbers on their side, but the Cuba-puppet regime has the guns, the planes, the tanks, the truncheons and the tear gas. Better still (for the Venezuelan regime) the hands-on tutelage of their repressive apparatus comes courtesy of a regime (Castro’s) that jailed political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin’s during the Great Terror, and murdered more Cubans in his first three years in power than Hitler‘s murdered Germans during his first six. No “security specialists” in the Western Hemisphere can boast anything close to these credentials on their CV.

So like anyone else with stellar credentials Castro’s military and police advisors demand top price for their services. Last year Venezuelan subsidies to Cuba totaled $10 billion. That’s more than double what the Soviets used to send.

Jimmy Carter never met a dictator he didn’t like–how he must envy Barack Obama’s ability to change laws by decree!–and he is particularly fond of his “old friends,” the Castro brothers. So I think it is a safe bet that the anti-Communist forces in Venezuela will conclude they can get along without any help from Carter.